Before The Dawn
The End of Days is here, Armageddon. The year is 1027 A.E., one thousand and twenty-seven years after Earth was destroyed by a rogue neutron star. Faced with extinction, the last nations of Earth joined together in the greatest project their world had ever known: an Ark. It was a self-contained O’Neill cylinder, rotating to simulate gravity and driven by Project Orion. That vessel carried humanity across the dark to the 61 Cygni binary system. There the survivors settled the second planet of 61 Cygni A and named it Erdos. They had hoped the new world would offer peace. It did not.
Political grudges, old wounds, and the harsh wilderness of Erdos turned the colonists against one another. The Great Crimson War followed. It lasted seventeen years and killed a third of the settlers. In that darkness three figures shaped what humanity would become. Ruth Miller, Alysia and David's direct ancestor and leader of the Ruthanites, founded Pitt Novus and called the survivors into a coalition. Her purpose was to stop Astrid Bush, whose grief had hardened into a campaign of vengeance against Ruth’s brother, Elijah Miller. Elijah, broken by his failure to stand with Astrid in her worst hour, had sought refuge elsewhere. When the war ended, Astrid died on the fields of Uralica. Her empire shattered. From its ruins rose the Republic of Erdos, with Elijah Miller as its first president.
The remnants of Astrid’s armies scattered. Some settled the Julian Isles, in the same district as Rhykers Island. Others took refuge in the former Pe Settlement, the land that would become Scandia. Two hundred years passed before humanity returned to the heavens. Three centuries after that return, descendants of Astrid’s empire fled the Republic and crossed to an Earthlike world in the 61 Cygni B system. They named it Mercia. Free of Erdian rule, Mercia grew into a theocratic and imperial power. Roughly three hundred years after its founding, relations with Erdos collapsed. Determined never to suffer their ancestors’ fate again, the Mercians created a secret and powerful intelligence order: The Order of the Purified Blades. Its leader was Boris Kolya, charismatic, short-tempered, and consumed by a crusade to place his people at the center of humanity’s future.
In 999 A.E., two parents on Erdos gave birth to a prodigy. Her name was Alysia Miller, a descendant of Elijah. She was stronger and faster than ordinary people, quick to heal, and among the sharpest minds of her generation. Her family hid her for as long as they could. They feared what she might become. Adolescence undid that caution. Her rebellion uncovered old secrets and brought centuries of tension between Erdos and Mercia to a boil. Kolya saw her as the key to immortality. Under the direction of Josselyn Blattenburg, Mercian science produced humanity’s first true clone: Astrid Bush, reborn with her memories intact, as if she had only slept a thousand years. Mercians worshipped her as a goddess. Kolya had other ambitions. A schism followed.
By 1019 A.E., two years into the Mercian War, Alysia rescued Astrid from Mercia and took her in as the sister she had never had. Kolya treated the loss as an opportunity rather than a defeat. He had grown too powerful for any single enemy to stop. Alysia, Astrid, and their companions carried the war onto Mercia itself and overthrew him. The victory was bought at a terrible price. Kolya drowned the planet in nuclear fire. While he met his end, and the war was won, it came at a terrible price. Her parents were the first casualties in the war, Then her first lover Kevin Carter fell, then Fred Caruso, then Victor Zrille, Then Jerry Durant, then Elena fell.
Following the war, In 1022 A.E. Alysia's closest friend, Kylee Caruso, vanished into a mission to steal Mercian data cores, hoping to advance Erdian medicine and learn how Mercia had risen so quickly. On Erdos they were received as heroes. President Fiona Glenn covered them in medals and titles. Then Kylee uncovered a truth that threatened the entire foundation of the republic. Perceval Pharmaceuticals, under its chief, Cameron Hendrickson, had funded both sides of the Mercian War in pursuit of immortality, and rule a human race in it's weakened state. President Glenn and Vice President Katya Drunski moved to bury the revelation at any cost. In the continental chase that followed, Katya captured Alysia’s new love, Theo Helmuth, and turned him into her enforcer. Kylee proved the conspiracy to the world, and the proof cost her life at Glenn's directive. Alysia made Glenn pay for that sacrifice and Fiona Glenn’s death lit the rebellion.
Katya took the presidency In 1023 A.E. and, Her first act was to crush the rising at its heart, in New Cleveland on Rhykers Island The campaign lasted nearly a year with inconclusive results. Alysia recaptured Theo and broke Katya’s hold on him, a rare setback, but Katya laid waste to most of the Island killing a 10th of it's population. In an effort to reinforce Katya's hold on power, Cameron placed in Katya’s hands the RFID chips already buried in the population. Two hundred million ordinary people became instruments of her will. She turned first toward Scandia, but the Dannevirke held. In Iota the dense Geister Forest broke the rhythm of mass assault. Vice President Kaylie Nash, with Marshals Mikkel Berthier and Holly Klenau, drove into Iota to destroy Tatiana Drazenik’s forces. They could not break Alysia. The Iron Guard left that campaign in ruin.
Katya cared less for Iota than for Scandia. Mercians lived there, the same people she blamed for the death of her first husband. Astrid Bush led among them. Alysia’s brother David had fallen in love with her. Jarl Olaf Heimskir gathered Scandians, Mercian refugees, and Sami volunteers at the mouth of Cheronev Pass, near Odda Karasjok. There Olaf became the first commander to defeat Katya Drunski in open battle. She returned, laid siege, and starved the defenders for three months. They were nearly overrun by a force three times their number when Alysia arrived with Iotans and volunteers from New Cleveland and drove Katya back. Two thirds of Katya’s army was destroyed. One of her marshals was lost.
She answered with a plea to Cameron: turn his arsenal on Erdos. The plan, once a Mercian concept, became Operation Wormwood. A single missile burrowed into the Helian volcanic range and tore open a super-eruption. Ash filled the sky. Temperatures fell. Crops failed. Lakes and rivers poisoned, and hunger eventually followed. Scandia faced a volcanic winter no human should have been asked to endure. Pitt Novus, Hydaspah, and Xanadu vanished under ash and would take months to clean up the ash. The rice fields of Xanadu were buried. Proteus Lake turned alkaline and killed most of the fish. For Katya it was a reckoning. For Theo and the people of New Cleveland it felt like the end of days. For the Scandians it was Ragnarök.
By 1024, The world stood at the edge of a cliff into oblivion. Rhykers Island already torn from war from Katya, was beaten like a down horse by Fanaticism, dwindling the population further. On the continent of Atlantica, Tuscany fell with Joachim's death. Murdered by Theo in cold blood. Iota was recovering, Brevcik was abandoned, and Scandia stood on the brink. While Holly was about to claim victory for Katya in Wahda, by securing the new bread basket for her armies. Katya had Scandia by the knees. The leader of Scandia had other plans. Olaf lured Katya into a trap and nuked his own capital with him inside, in an effort to destroy her army. This put serious pressure on Cameron Hendrickson to put his endgame into motion.
Ten years have now passed since that calamity began. Alysia Miller stands at the center of it, icon to some and pariah to others. The blood that made her extraordinary also ignited two wars: the Mercian War and the Erdian Civil War. Almost everyone who loved Alysia has been taken. Kevin, Jerry, Fred, her parents, and Victor died in the first war. Kylee, Julian, Halfdan, and Elijah fell in the second, killed by those who saw her as a threat or as an opportunity. She has brought down 2 tyrants in her life time, Boris Kolya, and Fiona Glenn, but couldn't bring down the 3rd. Olaf Heimskir of Scandia made the hard choice with his brave few, to vaporize Katya Drunski, and her gigantic army from the face of Erdos. His sacrifice earned him a place in the hallowed halls of his faith. Now humanity faces ruin again, not only from itself, but from a man who claims to be a god.
Cameron Hendrickson, called Perdition by those who oppose him, and the Antichrist to the New Clevelanders, has made Erdos a prison of ash and obedience. The chip he had created under the guise of security and better health, still binds millions in indentured servitude. Alysia and the last resistance formed a new Republic under the alliance of a few districts, and the last of the free people's of Erdos as a means to end him and break that control, or die trying. But his Marshal, Holly Klenau, stands in the way of Alysia's new fledging Republic. Beside Alysia, stand Theo Helmuth of New Cleveland, Tatiana Drazenik of Iota, Kayla Frostburn of Scandia, and Noman El-Tuma of Wahda. Together they will make their final stand against Perdition itself, for what remains of humanity and it's fragile future.
